As a Labour mayor he should be supporting these strikes. There was once a time when a labour politician would have sat around the brazier in solidarity with the strikers. In this era of momentum, more politicians need to show their solidarity with strikers.

(Original post by BBS_)
Here's a reminder of what the unions rejected last time:

32-hour, four-day week? These guys are taking the piss, and I say that as someone who is extremely pro-trade union. We should proceed to make the change to driverless trains as soon as possible. The union has overplayed their hand. They should see how they like earning £0 a year for a 0 hour work week.

(Original post by AlexanderHam)
32-hour, four-day week? These guys are taking the piss, and I say that as someone who is extremely pro-trade union. We should proceed to make the change to driverless trains as soon as possible. The union has overplayed their hand. They should see how they like earning £0 a year for a 0 hour work week.

Nonetheless a Labour Party politicians loyalty and solidarity needs to be with the strikers. Mr Kahn needs to get around the brazier with the pickets.

(Original post by Ambitious1999)
Nonetheless a Labour Party politicians loyalty and solidarity needs to be with the strikers. Mr Kahn needs to get around the brazier with the pickets.
Britain needs more strikes until they get what is rightfully theirs.

Striking is a highly contentious issue. While I wholeheartedly support workers' rights, striking should always be done as an absolute last resort. The problem is that strikers seem to be losing sight of this and letting the power go to their heads a bit - it's as if they are striking for every reason under the sun these days! And the strikes don't really seem to be resolving anything either. It's as if everything keeps going round in a vicious circle. While I don't think continuous strikes are necessarily the answer, I'm not really sure what is the answer to resolving the workers' discontent...

The most controversial problem, however, is the fact that these rail strikes are putting commuters' livelihoods at risk - just look at the absolute disaster that is Southern Rail! And the strikers are in danger of huge public and political backlash building up against them as a result. While I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea of a widespread ban on striking across the whole public sector, I would not be surprised in the slightest if the government ban all public service workers from striking in the next year or two. Maybe I'm wrong, but I can easily see it going that way at the moment...

(Original post by Lh030396)
I would not be surprised in the slightest if the government ban all public service workers from striking in the next year or two. Maybe I'm wrong, but I can easily see it going that way at the moment...

Depending on how you define the public sector, there are some employees of the country who are banned from being in a trade union altogether, and for whom striking is - to all intents and purposes - a crime.

(Original post by Ambitious1999)
As a Labour mayor he should be supporting these strikes. There was once a time when a labour politician would have sat around the brazier in solidarity with the strikers. In this era of momentum, more politicians need to show their solidarity with strikers.

You said it yourself. 'There was once a time'.

I don't see how Sadiq Khan could support this. He himself made the promise that there would be zero days worth of strikes, and more importantly, why would he, such a champion of London, willingly support what is an endless shutting down of various parts of London's transport services? In effect, supporting bringing areas to a standstill.

Nobody should be supporting tube strikes. Tube drivers earn loads, do next-to-no work compared to most jobs and quite frankly we're only years from the trains being self-driving already. Hell, most of the DLR already runs automatically. **** tube drivers.

Bus drivers, on the other hand, deserve a lot of gratitude from Londoners. They're paid less, they do much more work, they're more likely to suffer harm at work and they have to clean up the mess when the tube people throw their toys out of their prams.

If the DLR expanded across the city I'd never use the tube. It's slower, sure, but the trains are more spacious and the AI that runs the trains isn't going to screw me by deciding it doesn't fancy coming to work.

If anyone is wondering why the tube drivers can strike so often, reject such amazing deals from TfL and continue to get off scot-free with both their jobs and basically all of their demands agreed to, it's because tube drivers as a whole are products of nepotism and stupidity on behalf of TfL's hiring practices.

Look at the terms in the image posted above. Is there anyone who wouldn't want to do that job for those rewards? I would. And in fact, I do. So I looked into it. The only people allowed to be tube drivers are people who have already worked for TfL long-term. It doesn't matter if you've been driving trains before, as MeYou2Night has, there is no mechanism whatsoever for you to apply unless you have already invested yourself in the system for years. Tube drivers effectively convinced TfL to let them pull up the drawbridge and secure themselves and their friends in a remarkably privileged position, giving them absolute power to force their will onto management.

So they're untouchable, and this problem isn't going away. If you think they're going to lie down and accept automation that'll take away their cushy jobs in ten, twenty years, you're going to have a grim surprise. And they will throw a fit if TfL try and change their hiring practices because the moment they do, tube drivers become vulnerable to competition for their places.

So yeah. These pampered, work-shy pisspots have the whole city over a barrel and will do for the foreseeable future.